Your best stories, the ones you will tell around the campfire for years.

The stories that will shape and define who you are.

The ones you will point back to as defining moments, they have a secret.

Want to know it?

Your best stories are often the ones that feel the worst when you are actually in them.

We tend to want safe epic stories. We want there to be risk, but not too much. We want things to be dangerous, but never really out of our control. We want the outcome to be up for grabs, but not completely out of our reach.

That is not how life works.

Life invites you to risk. To be dangerous. To court disaster in the name of doing the right thing.

And that won’t feel good. It won’t always feel smart or happy.

The best stories sometimes feel the worst, but the second secret is that that feeling is not forever.

It passes. It is a moment, a season, something temporary.

And what it leaves in its’ wake is the best story.

Don’t stop living them just because they hurt at first.